Every business is looking for an edge; a way they can improve productivity and efficiency and make more money. They often turn to software programs that can help them reach these goals quickly and cost-effectively. Two great programs on the market come together to help you and your business gain and retain customers. Outlook, by Microsoft and Prophet by Avidian combine to give you a great program for any business.



What is Outlook?

Outlook is an email and data information manager that is part of Microsoft's overall Office package. Outlook is commonly used by businesses as their primary, if not sole, email program. It allows for users to send and receive email through Outlook. Beyond just email, Outlook allows for personal information management. Personal information management in Outlook is accomplished using calendars, to-do lists, and task lists, just to name a few. Outlook is one of the most commonly used programs and Outlook is known as being very easy to use.

What is Prophet?

Prophet is a sales and contact management program that helps your business accomplish many important tasks that help you grow your business. It allows for you to gather data efficiently, schedule follow-up, and share and report data easily. It is designed to work within Outlook, making it effective, easy to use, and powerful.

How do Prophet and Outlook relate?

Prophet is a plug-in for Outlook. This means that once the program is installed, it runs within Outlook. All data management and reporting is done right from Outlook. It is designed to work with several versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2003, Outlook XP and Outlook 2000. It can also work with the server counterpart to Outlook, Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003.

Why is working with Outlook a benefit?

Ease of use is one reason that it is so helpful that Prophet operated within Outlook. Users do not have to open an extra program every time they need to use their sales and contact management program. This serves two important functions. First off, having Outlook already opens means that a user will be more likely to remember to use the program. The more often your sales and contact management program is use, the more effective it will be. Second, it is a very important time saving step. Extra time you have spend locating and opening a program is time that could be spent elsewhere. Having Outlook already open and ready to go means that you do not have to take time locating and opening it. You also avoid duplicating work. When you enter your information such as contact data, you are entering in both Outlook and Prophet; you don't have to enter information into two separate programs or take the time to synch.

Training users on Prophet and Outlook.

Most users are very familiar with Outlook. Outlook is also a very commonly used program. This means that your company is going to save a large amount in time and money when you decide to implement Prophet as a sales and contact management program. The familiarity that most users have with Outlook gives a great starting point for Prophet. Users only have to master the unique features of Prophet. Tasks that are common and frequent in Outlook are done in very similar ways with Prophet. The costs associated with training on a unique program can add up quickly. In person training, books, and software based training can all add to the overall costs of a software program.

Using Outlook to manage your sales and contacts.

Prophet allows you to complete several sales and contact management steps from Outlook. From any folder in Outlook you can create new contacts. You can also use contacts that you already have in Outlook. You can create relationships between any of the contacts you have in Outlook. You can also create personalized messages that Outlook will send automatically at the time you specify. Within the Outlook form, there is a large amount of information that you can enter. You can enter data about each time you contact a client, what stage of the sales process they are in, and a large amount of other data. There are even fields that be customized to ensure that your business is able to enter the information that may be specific to them. All this data is searchable and can be used for quick and effective location later. You can search phone notes, email notes, and even attachments to find the exact piece of data you need.

Opportunity management from Outlook.

Prophet's opportunity manager is another feature that runs directly from Outlook. It allows for a quick review of all of your sales leads and opportunities with a few quick clicks in Outlook. You can organize the data in several different ways such as filtering for specific data, sorting by headings, or opportunity stage. From here, you can use Outlook to send out emails based on the category you specify. For example, if you wanted to send a specific follow-up email to a group that was in a final sales stage, you could compose the email in Outlook, using Prophet to specify the recipients quickly, and Outlook could send it at the time you pre-set.

Reporting from data in Outlook and Prophet.

Once you have all this data that you have entered into Outlook, using Prophet, you want to be able to report on it. Prophet makes this easy. All the notes, sales data, and customer information contained in Outlook can easily be turned into solid reports. Report wizards allow you to take data and turn it into formats such as PDF's or HTML right from Outlook. You can then use Outlook to email the reports right from the same program.

Conclusion

Outlook is a great program. As email programs go, Outlook is known as one of the easiest to use programs on the market. Prophet takes the power and effectiveness of Outlook and turns it into a top notch sales and contact management program. Through the combination of Outlook and Prophet, your business will have a program that will help your business grow and develop.